Self-Leadership

As I progress in my chosen career path where I teach Strategic Leadership, Sustainability Leadership and Sustainability for Innovation at @Lagos Business School, I find that participants are mostly interested in being effective leaders. There is so much on leadership and the term can sometimes be nebulous. In Nigeria, we speak about the challenges of leadership, but then we do not crystallize what is required for societal change: effective leadership and management. So much has been written on the difference between leaders and managers and more will still be written. This post is about self-leadership and I will say that effective leadership starts with self-leadership.

To be able to inspire others, it is important that you are aware of who you are: understand your strengths and your weaknesses, set your personal vision and objectives, and develop a plan that will enable you to achieve this.

It is leading from within and makes for quality leadership.

Now, leadership is morally neutral. An effective leader can get people to do things that are not morally good, as well as what is morally good, but that is outside of the scope of this post.

I regularly go back to my PhD thesis which looked at the psychologist, @Robert Sternberg’s practical intelligence approach to leadership. This goes beyond analytical (academic) creative or social intelligences, to the ability to learn from experience (individual and those of others) and apply these into leadership scenarios.

The first level of this is the intrapersonal level, basically, self-leadership — which is the ability to learn from oneself. It covers identity, awareness, reflection, motivation and actualisation; however, such actualisation is defined.

To be able to effectively lead others, you must be able to lead yourself. Knowing who you are, what you like, what you want to achieve in life, and how you plan to get there will invariably contribute to the selection of the right environment within which one can influence others. We have all heard of leader burnout and people choosing to live their lives post-retirement. Self-leadership forces us to make certain choices or decisions now, to align our needs, abilities, objectives and our realities. That level of consciousness will result in more intentional choices that will invariably contribute to more effective leadership.

I realise this is much longer than I intended even though there is so much still to write on the topic.

I think it will be better to write a series on effective leadership, strategic leadership and innovative leadership. I will start with self-leadership and for the series, it will go beyond LinkedIn so if you would like to know more about this, then send me an email so I can add you to the mailing list and you can get my future entries on leadership.